


Right Beside

by prettybrilliantfunny



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettybrilliantfunny/pseuds/prettybrilliantfunny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hold still, Jim, or I’ll leave the damn thing off.  See how well those recruiting holos go-over when you’ve only got the one ear.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Right Beside

 

“Hold still, Jim, or I’ll leave the damn thing off.  See how well those recruiting holos go-over when you’ve only got the one ear.” 

“M’right’s my good side anyway,” Jim joked, his hypo’d smile going crooked.  The left side of his face was still smeared copper with blood and the smile was disorienting—made Bones feel sick.  So he didn’t look.  Jim reached up to fiddle with the detached lobe of his ear and Bones smacked his hand away, scowling. 

“I’ll goddamn do it,” he growled, and if he was swearing more than usual it had nothing to do with the blood slicking the handle of the dermal regenerator, or the emergency beam-out that had brought Spock into the medbay with Jim’s body under one hand and a piece of him in the other. 

Jim, by contrast, seemed hardly perturbed by how close that bat’leth had come to splitting that pretty little skull of his clear in two: one arm was tucked behind his head on the medbay cot and the other, so recently chastised by Bones, now settled lazily over his chest.  He could have been sunbathing on Riza if it weren’t for the dark stain blotting out the command gold of his tunic.

Jim’s eyes, Neptune blue, slid to his.  “I’d rather you didn’t,” he drawled, only slurring a little – and if Bones had any sense of self-restraint he’d have doped him five-ways to Sunday.  But he’d needed to see those eyes open, fixing even hazily on him, to keep from losing his friggin’ mind.  Bloody as he was, sleep would have looked too close to death.

It meant having to listen to the kid run off at the mouth, but for Bones’ sanity it was better than the alternative.

“Shut yer trap, kid, I’m working.”

“You say the sweetest things, Bones...”

He reached in a threatening manner towards the half-open drawer of hypos and Jim’s next breath came with a huff of laughter.  He was a bit uncoordinated with the mild-sedation, but he made a pantomime of locking his lips that fooled neither of them.  Jim hated hypos nearly as much as Bones hated trying to administer them to him.

“You wanna tell me how you got into a fight with a Klingon squadron on a supposedly uninhabited planet?”

Jim closed his eyes, lashes fine against his skin.  “You make it sound like it’s my fault.”

“It’s _always_ your fault.”

“Statistically unlikely,” the captain managed, though his heavy tongue stuck on the hard t’s.  The way his mouth quirked after had more to do with his own frustration than what Bones said next.

“Now you sound like Spock.”

The regenerator whirred down, leaving an angry red line along the seam of rejoined skin.  “And how the hell didn’t he pick this up?  What the hell kind of science officer screws up a lifeform scan?”

“Yes, let’s blame Spock.  I like that much better.” His eyes opened again and they were clearer as they focused first on the medbay ceiling and then on Bones. 

Only Jim Kirk would shake off a sedative by sheer force of will.  That alone was enough to make Bones want to dose him again.

“He’s _your_ first officer,” he reminded him and there was a knit of brows.

“Wait – so we’re back to this being my fault?”

The glare he shot him should be answer enough, but Jim reached up to fiddle with his ear, the damned self-sure smile stretching his lips and Bones hated himself for the ache it pulled across his chest.  He could have died today, hell he might’ve even managed to get Spock killed, but it took all of Bones years as a cantankerous bastard to swallow down the smile Jim was so effortless at pulling out of him.

Bones grabbed his wrist, hard enough to uncurl Jim’s fingers and he could feel the steady thrum of his pressured pulse beneath two fingers.

“You keep doing this crazy-ass bullshit and I’m gonna kill you myself.  Got it?”

It was all eyes with Jim – bright turquoise under the bay lights and dancing – and Bones had never been very good at resisting vice.  All Jim had to do was tilt his face ever so slightly upwards, those eyes still fixed on Bones like he’s a once-in-a-lifetime event—an eclipse, a star burning out red—and damnit if he can’t read the kid’s mind as easy as breathing.

Jim tilted his face, and Bones ducked his head—meeting bruised lips with his own.  It’s soft until it’s not, and gods if Jim stopped leading away teams it’d be too soon.  Jim’s tongue touched to his lips, but it was Bones who pulled away tasting the faint tang of iron, his eyes half-shuttered.

“Yeah?” Jim whispered into the closing of his mouth. 

Bones pressed his forehead to Jim’s, making a thin, determined line of his lips.

“ _Yeah_ ,” he breathed back.

“I should write you up,” Jim murmured, voice low but gaze clear as a phaser blast.  Bones caught it full in the chest, forgot where he came from—just for a moment—and then: “for threatening a superior officer.”

Bones rolled his eyes and drifted the tricorder across Jim’s chest; barely registering the readouts, vitals leveling when he retorted, “Mitigating circumstances.”

“ _Please_ ,” Jim scoffed, trying to sit up only to have Bones hard hand on his shoulder push him back down.

“I was under duress.”

“You’re always under duress.”

“I’m the Chief Medical officer on a galaxy class starship run by a damned lunatic,” Bones snapped, but what he meant to be an offhand test turned into an endearing tug, his fingers pulling lightly on the edge of the freshly bonded ear.  “Who’s always getting his fool ass captured by the natives,” he added with recovered brusqueness. 

Jim’s hand curled into the sleeve of his uniform.  It was a dirty trick, Bones knew, but he didn’t go.  He’d been pretty much at the kid’s mercy since that first meeting on the recruitment shuttle – so sure he was about to lose his breakfast, lunch, and last night’s dinner in one turbulent lurch—until those eyes met his and they were lifting off. 

They had both looked like shit warmed-over, but surrounded by all those shiny-faced cadets and passing a scuffed flask back and forth between them, Bones had felt strangely like he’d won something.

“You look terrible,” he said gruffly, but Jim’s smile was meteoric.  It wasn’t the first time James T. Kirk had waltzed into his life bruised, battered, and still grinning—and if Bones had his way, there would never be a last.


End file.
